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My team is doing all right, but I wish there were less conflict to deal with!" says George, the stressed-out, overworked, underpaid IT Project Manager. Sound familiar? Do you ever wish there were no conflict within your work teams and everyone would just get along and do their jobs?
In this paper, you will see that conflict within teams takes many forms and is not always a bad thing. You will learn the definition of a team and that there are advantages and disadvantages to working in teams. Finally, you will discover six components that healthy teams have and dysfunctional teams do not. Included is a quiz to score your team's health in regard to team-work, communication, and team process.
Conflict within the Team
One of the biggest complaints I hear in the classroom from Team Leaders and Project Managers is that conflict among team members is a significant source of stress. If taken to an extreme, conflict can hurt a team's production and even break it apart.
But what does it mean if there is no conflict within the team (other than less stress for the Team Leader)? No conflict within a team generally means one of two things: 1) the team members don't care anymore and will just go along with whatever is put forward, or 2) all team members think exactly the same. On the surface, having a team that thinks exactly the same sounds nice, with no conflict and everyone happy. However, with no conflict, you may find that no one challenges old ways, no one thinks creatively, no one improves processes, and no one introduces new thinking. The kiss-of-death in most IT organizations is to stay the same for too long.
Both positive and negative results from conflict exist. Positive results from conflict are good and healthy; negative results from conflict are bad.
Conflict can lead to the following positive results:
- Increased involvement and team cohesion - New ideas - Challenges to old processes - Innovation and creative solutions to problems - Healthy venting of emotions
-The team striving toward a common goal - Clarification of objectives - Pressure that moves a stuck team forward - New cultural perspectives
Conflict can also lead to the following negative results:
- Lack of new ideas and solutions - Personal attacks
- No risk-taking and a cover-your-behind mentality - Withholding of ideas - Strong resistance to change - Polarization of groups and formation of cliques - Communication breakdown - Burnout - No buy-in to the plan - Sabotage
Where does all this conflict come from? The following may contribute to conflict:
- Different personalities - Different cultural perspectives - Different education and experience - Different viewpoints - Lack of information - Lack of respect - Generational differences - View of risk
The bottom line is that some degree of conflict is unavoidable but also absolutely essential for a healthy team. As a manager, you must determine how your team deals with inevitable conflict to ensure positive results.
Conflict and Teams
Most IT organizations are structured to work in teams. We may see Work Teams, Project Teams, Quality Teams, Horizontal Teams, and Vertical Teams.
The definition of a team is: a group of individuals who must work interdependently in order to attain individual and organizational objectives.
The key word here is "interdependently". Interdependence means that all members of the team must depend on each other, and if any one individual drops the ball, the whole team suffers. Different divisions within a company may need to share information, but they are not really a team.
Why the shift to teams? The answer is simple. There is less management, less direction, more autonomy and accountability, the need for specialists, and a greater expectation to work independently without management direction. Also, senior managers know that peer pressure to support team goals and each other is a very powerful motivator, and productivity is much greater with a team than with individual workers. Most smart companies take advantage of this.
As you well know, working in teams is not all sunshine and happiness. In fact, many managers in IT organizations fail to recognize that there are both advantages and disadvantages to working in teams.
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